In an effort to further help fight coronavirus scams, European lawmakers are urging the region‘s e-commerce giants and media platforms to share more data with each other.
Once the pandemic made its way to the West, on-line ads for PPE and even alleged coronavirus cures started to appear online even after Google, Facebook and other platforms banned such types of promoting.
Along with taking advantage of consumer‘s fears surrounding the pandemic, this merchandise could put individuals in danger by not offering adequate safety towards the virus and many so-called coronavirus cures had been discovered to do extra hurt than good as a cure for Covid-19 does not yet exist.
EU commissioner for justice, Didier Reynders defined in a statement why Europe wants e-commerce and media platforms to work extra closely during the second wave of Covid-19 to fight coronavirus scams, saying:
“We know from our earlier experience that fraudsters see this pandemic as a possibility to trick European customers. We also know that working with the key on-line platforms is important to guard customers from their unlawful practices. Immediately I inspired the platforms to hitch forces and interact in a peer-to-peer alternate to further strengthen their response. We have to be much more agile during the second wave currently hitting Europe.”
Tackling coronavirus scams
According to the European Commission, Reynders lately met with the leaders of a lot of on-line platforms together with Amazon, Alibaba, eBay, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Rakuten and Yahoo to debate new developments and enterprise practices linked to the pandemic in order to avert a new wave of coronavirus scams.
Back in March, the consumer protection authorities of EU Member States adopted a common position on the issue and since then, the European Commission and consumer protection enforcers across the EU have been in regular contact with these online platforms regarding how to tackle coronavirus scams.
These measures have resulted in platforms reporting the removal of “hundreds of millions” of unlawful gives and ads according to the European Commission. There has also been a “steady decline” in the number of new coronavirus-related listings which shows that working together with online platforms has been successful in preventing new coronavirus scams.
At the similar time, European Fee EVP Margrethe Vestager lately gave a speech wherein she stated that the Digital Providers Act (DSA) would require on-line platforms to play a bigger function in coping with unlawful content and harmful merchandise.
A second wave of Covid-19 is a severe matter on its own that can solely be made worse by fraudsters making an attempt to take advantage of consumer fears. Hopefully by continuing to work along with on-line platforms, the EU may also help further cut back the number of coronavirus scams online.